Centamin, which is listed on the LSE and TSX and whose primary asset is the Sukari gold mine in Egypt, has announced that a 120 000 m drill programme in 2018 across the company's wholly owned landholdings in Côte d'Ivoire (CDI), has resulted in mineral resources increasing by more than 100 %.

A maiden resource has been declared at the ABC project and the Doropo project mineral resource has grown by 58 %. Building on these results, a further 90 000 m of drilling is budgeted and underway for 2019.

The Doropo resource now comprises 2,13 Moz Au in the indicated category and 0,8 Moz Au in the inferred category at a gold cut-off of 0,5 g/t. The updated mineral resource sits within a 6 km radius area and extends from surface to a maximum depth of 250 m, suitable for open-pit mining and trucking to one central processing facility.

At the ABC project the maiden resource estimate for the Kona South prospect at a 0,5 g/t gold cut-off consists of 19,6 million ore tonnes at 1,03 g/t Au in the indicated category for 650 koz of gold and 16,1 million ore tonnes at 0,87 g/t Au in the inferred category for approximately 450 koz of gold.

The mineral resource area is defined from surface, along a 2,3 km strike, and remains open in all directions.

Preliminary metallurgical test work suggests no major metallurgical issues with high recovery rates expected from conventional CIL processing.

“2018 saw a further increase in our investment and level of activity in CDI across our 3 472 km² land holding,” commented Centamin’s CEO, Andrew Pardey. “We have only scratched the surface of the potential of these assets, and we are maintaining an intensive campaign in 2019 to define further quality gold ounces.

“Doropo continues to demonstrate the potential to be our next organic development project. Ongoing exploration and concurrent viability studies will further unlock the potential future scale of this project as we assess the economics against our internal project value creation criteria. The PEA is progressing well and we look forward to reporting the results to the market at the end of H2-2019. Delivery of a maiden reserve and further feasibility work are critical milestones for 2019, ahead of a Board decision on capital allocated for development.

“The success and scale of the 2018 ABC discovery results and the reporting of the maiden Kona South resource in less than two years of active exploration highlight the scale and quality of the Lolosso Gold Corridor and the regional generative potential of the ABC land package.”

The Doropo project is located in the north-east Cote d'Ivoire and consists of nine permits over a highly prospective landholding that lies between the Boromo-Batie and the Hounde-Tehini greenstone belts.

Centamin began extensive exploration at Doropo in late 2014, leading to maiden resource being declared in 2017. The company's experienced exploration team have achieved year-on-year resource growth.

The ABC project is located in north-west Côte d'Ivoire, approximately 600 km west of Doropo. ABC is a greenfield exploration project, consisting of two permits, Kona and FarakoNafana, covering a 750 km2 highly prospective landholding along the underexplored contact zone between the Archean and Birimian cratons.